Advertisement

Advertisement

New Scientist Live

NASA launches new telescope to solve sun heat mystery

IT’S not usually a good idea to stare at the sun – unless you’re a &dollar;181-million telescope, that is.

NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) will be launched this week to probe an underappreciated aspect of the sun – the region between the star’s surface and its sizzling corona, the plasma layer that envelops it.

Little is known about what happens here. “IRIS will fill crucial gaps in our understanding of what role the interface region plays in powering the corona,” says IRIS mission scientist Jeffrey Newmark.

On 26 June, an aircraft carrying a rocket with the telescope inside will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and will release its payload 12 kilometres up. The rocket will then carry the telescope to its orbit, some 660 kilometres above Earth’s surface.

Advertisement

IRIS will track short-lived jets of plasma, which the IRIS team hope will help explain why the corona, at 1 million kelvin, is so much hotter than the surface, at a mere 6000 K.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Staring at the sun”